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saying.
“So it is hardly appropriate to talk about this position changing under someone’s pressure.”
Peskov said Russia’s refusal to back further action against the regime after last week’s Houla massacre and other attacks on civilians was based on an approach “completely free of emotions, which are hardly appropriate here.”
Putin is expected to face questions from both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on today during his first foreign tour since being sworn in for a third Kremlin term.
Hollande in particular has upset Russia by refusing to rule out foreign military intervention to stamp out nearly 15 months of fighting that observers believe has claimed some 13 000 lives.
Moscow is also coming under growing pressure from Washington to at least back broader financial sanctions against its Soviet-era ally.
The White House on Wednesday accused Russia and China of being on “the wrong side of history” and dispatched the US Treasury’s financial intelligence chief to Moscow for further talks.
Russia insists that it is not supporting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, but respect for international law and the policy of non-intervention in internal conflicts.
“We are not Assad’s allies,” Russia’s EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov separately told reporters.
“We are defending international law and Syrians’ right to determine their own country’s future in normal circumstances,” he said.
Russia’s standoff with the West has been accompanied by reports of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations that are focused on ways Moscow could back down without losing its diplomatic prestige.
The New York Times has reported that one option being promoted in some Washington and Moscow circles involves a transition of power similar to that used to end president Ali Abdullah Saleh strongman rule in Yemen this year.
The discussed transition would reportedly see Assad cede power to his inner circle for an interim period during which political talks with the opposition are held.
Moscow could theoretically back this option because its historic relations with Syria depend not on Assad but generations of military and trade contacts that it might potentially keep long-term.
Russia has given no direct indication that it was willing to back such an initiative.
But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted earlier this week that peace envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point plan calls for talks “between the Syrian government and the opposition” rather than Assad himself.
Clinton warns Russia its Syria policy risks civil war
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday criticised Russia’s resistance to UN action on Syria, warning that its policy could contribute to a civil war.
The Russians “are telling me they don’t want to see a civil war. I have been telling them their policy is going help to contribute to a civil war,” she told a mainly student audience on a visit to Copenhagen.
Clinton warned that unless unchecked, the deadly violence in Syria could lead to civil war or even morph into a proxy war because of Iran’s support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
She said she had spoken on Wednesday with the international envoy on Syria, Kofi Annan, who is trying to expand his mandate to be able to deal more effectively
with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
“We have to bring the Russians on board because the dangers we face are terrible,” said Clinton, who is in Denmark on the first leg of a Scandinavian tour.
She said the absence of UN support for action in Syria due mainly to Russia’s opposition “makes it harder” to respond to the crisis, as the international community did last year in Libya.
“The continued slaughter of innocent people, both by the military and by militias supported by the government and increasingly by the opposition . . . could morph into a civil war in a country that would be riven by sectarian divides, which then could morph into a proxy war in the region.
“Remember you have Iran deeply embedded in Syria — their military are coaching the Syrian military.
“The Quds Force, which is a branch of the military, is helping them set up these sectarian militias.
“We know it actually could get much worse than it is,” she said. — AFP.
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